A test wind turbine for Dominion’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project. Photo by Charlie Paullin/Virginia Mercury.
The federal government announced Wednesday that it has awarded two new offshore wind energy leases off the mid-Atlantic coast — one off the coast of Delaware, the other near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay in southern Virginia.
The two projects, totaling almost 278,000 acres, brought in more than $92 million in bids at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) auction. They were the first offshore wind leases to be awarded in the mid-Atlantic in a decade, and come at a time when several wind turbine projects, including one off the coast of Ocean City, are inching forward.
“Today’s lease sale represents a major milestone in meeting the demand for clean renewable energy along the East Coast,” said BOEM Director Elizabeth Klein. “BOEM remains committed to responsible offshore wind energy development in the Central Atlantic region in a manner that avoids, reduces or mitigates potential impacts to other ocean users and the marine environment while growing local economies.”
Equinor Wind, a Norwegian company, was named the provisional winner over four other bidders in the BOEM offshore wind energy lease for a site in federal waters off the Delaware coast, 26 nautical miles from Delaware Bay and not far from the site of a proposal bu US Wind to build 114 wind turbines off the coast of Ocean City.
The 2-gigawatt lease could produce enough electricity to power approximately 900,000 homes, federal officials said. Equinor agreed to pay $75 million for 101,443 acres in the Atlantic. The bidding for the lease area opened at $10.1 million.
Last month, BOEM issued a final environmental impact statement on US Wind’s proposed wind farm, moving the 80,000-acre project closer to reality.
US Wind officials said the next step, a record of decision from the bureau, is expected in September, with approval from other federal agencies expected by the end of this year. Onshore construction could begin next year, and the project could begin generating power in 2027.
But Ocean City officials are continuing to vow to fight the project. Last week, at a city council meeting, Mayor Rick Meehan said the local government had hired a law firm and is poised to sue the federal government if it gives final approval.
“The turbines will be as close as between 10.7 and 10.9 miles off our coast,” Meehan told the council. “The turbines will be at a minimum, 938 feet tall — if they were built on land, they would be the tallest structures in the state of Maryland.”
According to the town, each turbine would need to be lit with flashing red lights, which would also be visible from the beach, stretching the length of Ocean City.
“This totally industrializes the horizon off the coast of Ocean City,” Meehan said. “The sunrise will never be the same.”
City officials did not identify the law firm it has hired or what its legal arguments would be against the turbines. Meehan has repeatedly said the city isn’t opposed to offshore wind energy in theory, but would prefer the project to be moved farther out to sea, where it can’t be seen from the city’s shores. But the federal lease boundaries do not generally provide for that kind of flexibility.
Meehan and City Manager Terry McGean did not immediately respond to requests for comment this week on the dispute.
In June, BOEM signed a memorandum of understanding with Maryland to engage stakeholders in identifying acreage for additional offshore wind lease auctions in the Atlantic, a critical step to meeting offshore wind power generation targets for Maryland and other Mid-Atlantic state. The state has a mandate to use 100% clean electricity by 2035.
Meanwhile, in Virginia
Dominion Energy is spending $17.65 million for another piece of the ocean to expand its offshore wind energy.
Virginia’s largest utility was the lone bidder for the lease of 176,506 acres about 35 miles off the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay near Virginia Beach in the BOEM auction Wednesday.
The win means Dominion Energy has the potential to produce up to another 4 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power up to 1.4 million homes, directly adjacent to its $9.8 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project currently being built.
The new area also joins a 40,000-acre area, renamed CVOW South, off the coast of the Outer Banks in North Carolina that the utility announced in July it would purchase to produce up to 800 megawatts of electricity as part of an effort to meet increasing power demands.
“Offshore wind is critical to our all-of-the-above approach to meet the unprecedented growth of our customer electric demand over the next decade,” said Robert M. Blue, the chair, president and CEO of Dominion Energy. “Winning this lease area gives us another low-cost option to meet that growing demand while providing our customers with reliable, affordable and increasing clean energy.”
Liz Burdock, founder and CEO of the Oceantic Network, a Baltimore-based organization that promotes the offshore wind industry, hailed the lease auctions and said they will help bolster emerging offshore wind manufacturing centers, which include one at the Tradepoint Atlantic development in Baltimore County and another on the Eastern Shore.
“Today’s successful auction demonstrates that offshore wind will continue to play a leading role in the region’s energy future,” she said. “The resulting leases will strengthen an emerging manufacturing hub in the Mid-Atlantic, creating a dependable pipeline of contracts well into the next decade.
“Despite the general uncertainty around the upcoming presidential election, this is a vote of confidence for an American industry that has already received more than $2 billion of new supply chain investment in the first half of 2024,” she said.
– Neal Augenstein of WTOP News contributed to this report.
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